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THE SEA, POURVILLETHE SEA, POURVILLEOILIn the possession of A. A. Hannay, Esq.(See page 366)
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THE COAST OF BRITTANY ALONE WITH THE TIDETHE COAST OF BRITTANY ALONE WITH THE TIDEOILFormerly in the possession of Ross Winans, Esq.text4(See page 67)
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THE FUR JACKETTHE FUR JACKETARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND BROWNOIL(Picture in progress)(Completed picture)From a photograph lent byIn the Worcester Museum,Pickford R. Waller, Esq.Massachusetts(See page 432)
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND BROWN
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(Picture in progress)(Completed picture)
From a photograph lent byIn the Worcester Museum,
Pickford R. Waller, Esq.Massachusetts
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I cannot remember all the distinguished and amusing arguments or thedelightful appreciation of the French people of Whistler, or of the rather boring and rather brutal jabbing of the young man. At any rate, Whistler defended himself admirably, always keeping his temper, which the young man wished him to lose in order to trip him up. I saw that Whistler was bored and tried to separate them, but it had gone too far. Finally, Whistler held out his hand and with his charming quizzical smile said, 'Good-bye, oh, ah, I am so glad to have met you—on account of your brother!'
"The year before Whistler died, in December, I went to America on a short trip. I hadn't been home for a number of years. Whistler had always said he would go back with me some time, so I telegraphed him at Bath to induce him to come with me. He replied by telegram, 'Merry Xmas,bon voyage, but I fear you will have to face your country without me.'"
To anyone familiar with art schools Whistler's idea appeared revolutionary, but he knew that he was carrying on the tradition of Gleyre. Art schools are now conducted on such different principles that a comparison may be useful. Usually the student is not taught to do anything. The master puts him at drawing, telling him, after the drawing is finished, where it is wrong. The student starts again and drops into worse blunders because he has not been told how to avoid the first. If he improves, it is by accident, or his own intelligence, more than by teaching. At length, when the pupil has learned enough drawing to avoid the mistakes of the beginner, and to make it difficult for the master to detect his faults, he is put at painting, and the problem becomes twice as difficult for the student. In drawing, each school has some fixed method of working, nowhere more fixed than at the Royal Academy, which leads to nothing—or Paris. In painting, the professor corrects mistakes in colour, in tone, in value, which is easier than to correct drawing, and the student becomes more confused than ever, for he is in colour less likely than in drawing to tumble unaided on the right thing. As to the use of colours, the mixing of colours, the arrangement of the palette, the handling of tools—these are never taught in modern schools. The result is that the new-comer imitates the older students—the favourites—and shuffles along somehow. Any attempt on the part of the master to impress his character on thestudents would be resented by most of them, and any attempt at individuality on their part would be resented by the master, for the official art school, like the official technical school, is the resort of the incompetent. The Royal Academy goes so far as to change the visitors in its painting schools—that is, the teachers—every month, and the confusion to the student handed on from Mr. Sargent to Sir Hubert von Herkomer and then to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema can hardly be imagined.
For this sort of art school Whistler had no toleration—its product is the amateur or Academician. When he was asked, "Then you would do away with all the art schools?" Whistler answered, "Not at all, they are harmless, and it is just as well when the genius appears that he should find the fire alight and the room warm, an easel close at hand and the model sitting, but I have no doubt he'll alter the pose!"
Whistler would have liked to practise the methods of the Old Masters. He would have taught the students from the beginning, from the grinding and mixing of the colours. He believed that students should work with him as apprentices worked with their masters in earlier times. Artists then taught the student to work as they did. How much individuality, save the master's, is shown in Rubens' canvases, mostly done by his pupils? So long as Van Dyck remained with Rubens he worked in Rubens' manner, learning his trade. When he felt strong enough to say what he wanted to say in his own way as an accomplished craftsman, he left the school and set up for himself. Raphael was trained in Perugino's studio, helped his master, and, when he had learned all he could there, opened one of his own. And this is the way Whistler wished his students to work with him. The misfortune is that he made the experiment when it was too late to profit by the skill of the pupils whom he wished to train to be of use to him. He knew that it would take at least five years for students to learn to use the tools he put in their hands, and the fact that, at the end of three years, when the school closed, a few of his pupils could paint well enough for their painting to be mistaken for his shows how right he was. If, after five years, they could see for themselves the beauty that was around them, they would by that time have been taught how to paint it in their own way, for what he could do was to teach them to translatetheir vision on to canvas. Mr. Starr says that Whistler "told me to paint things exactly as I saw them. 'Young men think they should paint like this or that painter. Be quite simple, no fussy foolishness, you know, and don't try to be what they call strong. When a picture smells of paint,' he said slowly, 'it's what they call strong.'"
Had his health been maintained, had he not been discouraged because students mostly came to him with the desire to do work which looked easy, great results would have been accomplished. His regret was that students did not begin with him. Mrs. Addams has told us of the great success of one, Miss Prince, who had never been in an art school. She had nothing to unlearn. She understood, and, at the end of a year, had made more progress than any. There were exceptions among the more advanced, men who to-day are well-known artists and who, looking back, admit how much they learned. Frederick Frieseke, Henry S. Hubbell, and C. Harry White passed through the school. One of the few Frenchmen was Simon Bussy, who describes Whistler astrès distingué, très fin, très autoritaire, though not so stimulating a master as Gustave Moreau, under whom he had been studying. But the greater number of students, elementary or advanced, thought that Whistler was going to teach them, by some short cut, to arrive at distinction. When they found that, though the system was different, they had to go through the same drudgery as in any school, they were dissatisfied and left. Moreover, the strict discipline and the separation of the sexes were unpopular. Nor could they understand Whistler. Many of his sayings remembered by them explain their bewilderment.
One day, Whistler, going into the class, found three new pupils. To these he said:
"Where have you studied?"
"With Chase."
"Couldn't have done better!"
"And where have you studied?"
"With Bonnat."
"You couldn't have done better!"
"Where have you studied?"
"I have never studied anywhere, Mr. Whistler."
"I am sure you could not have done better!"
To the young lady who told him that she was painting what shesaw, he answered, "The shock will come when you see what you paint!"
To the man who was smoking, he said, "Really, you had better stop painting, for you might get interested in your work, and your pipe would go out!"
Of a superior amateur he inquired, "Have you been through college? I suppose you shoot? Fish, of course? Go in for football, no doubt? Yes? Well, then I can let you off for painting."
We asked Whistler how much truth there was in these stories. His answer was: "Well, you know, the one thing I cannot be responsible for in my daily life is the daily story about me."
But he admitted they were, in the main, true. He added one incident we have heard from no one else that explains a peculiarity to which we have referred. In Venice, he said, he got into the habit, as he worked on his plates, of blowing away the little powder raised by the needle ploughing through the varnish to the copper, and, unconsciously, he kept on blowing when painting or drawing. Once, after he had painted before the students and had left the studio, there was heard in the silence a sound of blowing. Then another student began blowing away as he worked, and so they went on. "Well," they said, "already we havela manière, and that is much." Whistler heard of it and broke himself of the habit. One day he saw on the wall in the men's studio, written in charcoal:
"I bought a palette just like his,His colours and his brush.The devil of it is, you see,I did not buy his touch."
"I bought a palette just like his,His colours and his brush.The devil of it is, you see,I did not buy his touch."
"I bought a palette just like his,His colours and his brush.The devil of it is, you see,I did not buy his touch."
"I bought a palette just like his,
His colours and his brush.
The devil of it is, you see,
I did not buy his touch."
Whistler's methods and manner confused the average students who came, but his faith in his system was as great as the students' unbelief. He suggested that his criticisms of their work should be recorded on a gramophone. He thought of opening another class in London. The only time E. saw theAcadémie, towards the beginning of the second year, the whole place was full of life and go. In the end, the want of confidence in him, his illness, and his absence broke up the school. But he sowed seed which will bring forth a thousandfold. For, just as his theory of art is now recognised as he stated it inThe Ten O'Clock,so will his practice, proved by his work and teaching, be accepted in the future.
Inthe spring of 1900 an event of great importance in our relations with Whistler occurred. Towards the end of May he asked us to write his Life. Now that his fame was established, a great deal, indeed far too much, was written about him. Unauthorised publications appeared or were in preparation, and it was evident that more would follow. Whistler shrank from being written about by people not in sympathy with him or incapable of understanding him. He was, and is, to many critics and commentators a riddle or an affront. Mistakes were made, facts were distorted. Mr. Heinemann suggested, first that he should write his autobiography, then that his biography should be written with his authority by someone in whom he had confidence. Mr. Heinemann thought of Henley, but Whistler objected. Mr. Charles Whibley was proposed by Mr. Heinemann, but again Whistler objected. It was after this that either Mr. Heinemann or Whistler mentioned the name of Joseph Pennell.
We had been abroad for a few days, and returned to London on May 28 to find a letter from Mr. Heinemann telling J. of this "magnificent opportunity." No one could appreciate more fully the honour as well as the responsibility. J. saw Whistler at once, and said, "You are the modern Cellini and you should write it yourself."
Whistler had neither the time nor patience, but he promised to contribute what he could to J.'s book. We knew that while staying at Whitehall Court he had written two, or perhaps more, autobiographical chapters at Mr. Heinemann's suggestion. Miss Birnie Philip, after the first edition of ourLifewas published, though we had proved our authority in the English Law Courts, wrote to theTimes(November 24, 1908) that Whistler "stated his objections to biographers in a fragment written in 1896 of what was intended to be the story of his life. The following passages will make his opinions clear:
"'Determined that no mendacious scamp shall tell the foolish truths about me when centuries have gone by, and anxiety no longer pulls at the pen of the "pupil" who would sell the soul of his master, I now proceed to take the wind out of such speculator by immediately furnishing myself the fiction of my own biography, which shall remain, and is the story of my life....
"'Curiously, too, I find no grief in noting the closing of more than one middle-aged eye that I had before now caught turned warily upon me with a view to future foolscap improved from slight intimacy....
"'How tiresome, indeed, are the Griswolds of this world, and how offensive. Pinning their unimportant names on the linen of the great as they return the intercepted wash, they go down to Posterity with their impudent bill, and Posterity accepts and remembers them as the unrequited benefactors of ungrateful genius!'"
This, according to Miss Birnie Philip, was written in 1896. Whistler added to the record, Mr. Heinemann says, while living with him at Whitehall Court. But Whistler soon found the task beyond him, and so, changing his mind on the subject, asked J. to write the story of his life and his work in 1900.
Almost immediately it was arranged that E. should collaborate and that we should do the book together. Whistler promised to help us in every way and, when in the mood, to tell us what he could about himself and his life, with the understanding that we were to take notes. He was not a man from whom dates and facts could be forced. His method was not unlike that of Dr. Johnson, who, when Boswell asked for biographical details, said, "They'll come out by degrees as we talk together." Whistler had to talk in his own fashion, or not at all; we were to listen, no matter where we met or under what conditions. It was also agreed that there were to be two volumes, one devoted to his life, the other to his work, and that photographs should be taken of the pictures in his studio to illustrate the volumes. Whistler's pictures were being carried off only too quickly, and whatever we needed for illustration, or as a record, would have to be photographed at once.
The duty of making the notes fell to E., and, from that time until his death, she kept an account of our meetings with him. He was true to his promise. We were often in the studio, and he spent evening afterevening with us. Sometimes we dined with him at Garlant's Hotel or at the Café Royal, sometimes we met at Mr. Heinemann's, but usually he dined with us in Buckingham Street, coming so frequently that he said to us one June evening:
"Well, you know, you will feel about me as I did in the old days about the man I could never ask to dinner because he was always there! I couldn't ask him to sit down, because there he always was, already in his chair!"
Once he told E. to write to J., who was out of town, that he was living on our staircase. During those evenings he gave us many facts and much material used in previous chapters. He began by telling us of the years at home, his student days in Paris, his coming to Chelsea, and, though dates were not his strong point, we soon had a consecutive story of that early period. Every evening made us wish more than ever that he could have written instead of talking, for we soon discovered the difficulty of rendering his talk. He used to reproach J. with "talking shorthand," but no one was a greater master of the art than himself. And so much of its meaning was in the pause, the gesture, the punctuating hands, the laugh, the adjusting of the eye-glass, the quick look from the keen blue eyes flashing under the bushy eyebrows. The impression left with us from the close intercourse of this summer was of his wonderful vitality, his inexhaustible youth. As yet illness had not sapped his energy. He was sixty-six, but only the greyness of the ever-abundant hair, the wrinkles, the loose throat suggested age. He held himself as erect, he took the world as gaily, his interests were as fresh as if he were beginning life. Some saw a sign of feebleness in the nap after dinner, but this was a habit of long standing, and after ten minutes, or less, he was awake, revived for the talk that went on until midnight and later.
Whistler wished us to have the photographing in the studio begun without delay. Our first meeting, after the preliminaries were settled, was on June 2, 1900; on the 6th the photographer and his assistant were in Fitzroy Street with J. to superintend. It took long to select the things which should be done first, Mr. Gray, the photographer, picking out those which he thought would come best, Whistler preferring others that Gray feared might not come at all, though the idea was that, in the end, everything in the studio should be photographed. Whistlerfound himself shoved in a corner, barricaded behind two or three big cameras, and he could scarcely stir. He grew impatient, he insisted that he must work. As the light was not good for the photographer, some canvases were moved out in the hall, some were put on the roof, but the best place was discovered to be Mr. Wimbush's studio in the same building. Whistler went with J. through the little cabinets where pastels and prints were kept, and decided that a certain number must be worked on, but that the others could be photographed. Then they lunched together with Miss Birnie Philip, Gray photographing all the while, and then Whistler's patience was exhausted and everybody was turned out until the next day, when Gray came again. And the next day, and many next days, J. would go to Fitzroy Street and Whistler would say, "Now you must wait," and he would wait in the little ante-room with Marie, and Whistler would talk away through the open door until J. was brought into the studio to see the finishing-touches added to the day's work. This explains the beginning of our difficulties and the reason why our progress was not rapid.
We have spoken of the fever of work that had taken hold of Whistler. He dreaded to lose a second. He was rarely willing to leave the studio during the day or, if he did, it was to work somewhere else, as when he went to Sir Frank Short's and, as he told us the same evening, pulled nineteen prints before lunch, and all the joy in it came back, but he did not return in the afternoon, because, "well, you know, my consideration for others quite equals my own energy." For himself he had no consideration, and his work seldom stopped. We remember one late afternoon during the summer, when he had asked us to come to the studio, finding tea on the table and Whistler at his easel. "We must have tea at once or it will get cold," he said, and went on painting. Ten minutes later he said again, "We must have tea," and again went on painting. And the tea waited for a half-hour before he could lay down his brushes, and then it was to place the canvas in a frame and look at it for another ten minutes. When an invited interruption was to him a hindrance, he could not but find Mr. Gray, with his huge apparatus, a nuisance. A good many photographs, however, were made at Fitzroy Street, and Whistler helped to get permission for pictures to be photographed wherever the photographing did not interfere with his work. In England, America, and on the Continent many pictures which hadnot been reproduced, and to which access could be obtained, were photographed.
Nothing interested Whistler more this year than the Universal Exhibition in Paris, and he and Mr. John M. Cauldwell, the American Commissioner, understood each other after a first encounter. Mr. Cauldwell, coming to Paris to arrange the exhibition, with little time at his disposal and a great deal to do, wrote to ask Whistler to call on a certain day "at 4.30 sharp." Whistler's answer was that, though appreciating the honour of the invitation, he regretted his inability to meet Mr. Cauldwell, as he never had been able and never should be able to be anywhere "at 4.30 sharp," and it looked as if the unfortunate experience of 1889 might be repeated. But when Whistler met Mr. Cauldwell, when he found how much deference was shown him, when he saw the decoration and arrangement of the American galleries, he was more than willing to be represented in the American section. He sentL'Andalouse, the portrait of Mrs. Whibley,Brown and Gold, the full-length of himself, and, at the Committee's request,The Little White Girl, never before seen in Paris. He brought together also a fine group of etchings, and when he learned that he was awarded aGrand Prixfor painting and another for engraving, he was gratified and did not hesitate to show it. The years of waiting for the official compliment did not lessen his pleasure when it came. Rossetti retired from the battle at an early stage, but Whistler fought to the end and gloried in his victory. He was dining at Mr. Heinemann's when he received the news, and they drank his health and crowned him with flowers, and he enjoyed it as fully as thefêtesof his early Paris days. J. was awarded a gold medal for engraving, and we suggested that the occasion was one for general celebration, which was complete when Timothy Cole, another gold medallist, appeared unexpectedly as we were sitting down to dinner. Mr. Kennedy was one of the party, and Miss Birnie Philip came with Whistler, and the little dinner was the ceremony he knew how to make of reunions of the kind. He was pleased when he heard that his medals were voted unanimously and read out the first with applause. A story in connection with the awards, told over our table some months later by John Lambert returning from Paris, amused him vastly. Though it was agreed that the first medals should not be announced until all the others were awarded, the news leaked out and got into the papers.At the next meeting of the jury, Carolus-Duran, always gorgeous, was more resplendent than ever in a flowered waistcoat. He took the chair, and at once, with his eye on the American jurors, said that there had been indiscretion. Alexander Harrison was up like a shot: "A propos des indiscrétions, messieurs, regardez le gilet de Carolus!"
During this time Whistler was paying not only for his rooms at the Hôtel Chatham in Paris, but for one at Garlant's Hotel, in addition to the apartment in the Rue du Bac where Miss Birnie Philip and her mother lived the greater part of the year, for the studios in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Fitzroy Street, and lastly, for the "Company of the Butterfly" in Hinde Street. It was no light burden, though he had a light way of referring to his "collection ofchâteauxandpieds-à-terre." His pockets were as full as he had wanted them, but he could not get used to their not being empty. Once, afraid he could not meet one of his many bills for rent, he asked a friend to verify his bank account, with the result that six thousand pounds were found to be lying idle.
Whistler, as a "West Point man," followed the Boer War with the same interest he had shown in the Spanish War. It was a "beautiful war" on the part of the Boers, for whom he had unbounded admiration. From Paris, through the winter, he sent us, week by week, Caran d'Ache's cartoons in theFigaro. In London he cut from the papers despatches and leaders that reported the bravery of the Boers and the blunders of the British, and carried them with him wherever he went. His comments did not amuse the "Islanders," whom, however, he knew how to soothe after exasperating them almost beyond endurance. One evening J. walked back with him to Garlant's, and they were having their whisky-and-soda in the landlady's room while Whistler gave his version of the news of the day, which he thought particularly psychological. Then suddenly, when it seemed as if the landlady could not stand it an instant longer, he turned and said in his most charming manner, "Well, you know, you would have made a very good Boer yourself, madam." As he said it, it became the most amiable of compliments, and the evening was finished over a dish of choice peaches which she hoped would please him. Another evening, the Boers were on the point of kindling a fatal war between himself and a good friend, when abang of his fist on the table brought down a picture from the wall of our dining-room, and in the crash of glass the Boers were forgotten. No one who met him during the years of the war can dissociate him from this talk, and not to refer to it would be to give a poor idea of him. If he had a sympathetic audience, he went over and over the incidents of the struggle; the wonder of the despatches; Lord Roberts' explanation that all would have gone well with the Suffolks on a certain occasion if they had not had a panic. Mrs. Kruger receiving the British Army while the Boers retired, supplied with all they wanted, though they went on capturing the British soldiers wholesale; General Buller's announcement that he had made the enemy respect his rear. When he was told of despatches stating that Buller, on one occasion, had retired without losing a man, or a flag, or a cannon, he added, "Yes, or a minute." He repeated the answer of a man at a lecture, who, when the lecturer declared that the cream of the British Army had gone to South Africa, called out, "Whipped cream." The blunderings and the surrenderings gave Whistler malicious joy, and he declared that as soon as the British soldier found he was no longer in a majority of ten to one, he threw up the sponge or dropped the gun. He recalled Bismarck's saying that South Africa would prove the grave of the British Empire, and also that the day would come when the blundering of the British Army would surprise the world, and he quoted "a sort of professional prophet" who predicted a July that would bring destruction to the British: "What has July 1900 in store for the Island?" he would ask.
There was no question of his interest in the Boers, but neither could there be that this interest was coloured by prejudice. He never forgot his "years of battle" in England, when, alone, he met the blunderings, mistakes, and misunderstandings of the army of artists, critics, and the public. In his old age, as in his youth, he loved London for its beauty. His friends were there, nowhere else was life so congenial, and not even Paris could keep him long from London. But it was his boast that he was an American citizen, that on his father's side he was Irish, a Highlander on his mother's, and that there was not a drop of Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins. He had no affection for the people who persisted in their abuse and ridicule until, confronted by the Goupil Exhibition of 1892, they were compelled—however grudgingly—to give him his due. This was one reason why he expressed the wish that none of his pictures should form part of an English national collection, or remain in England, and emphasised the fact that his sitters at the end were American or Scotch. He conquered, but the conquest did not make him accept the old enemies as new friends. In the position of the Boers he no doubt fancied a parallel with his own when, alone, they defied the English, who, on the battlefield as in the appreciation of art, blundered and misunderstood. Whistler's ingenuity in seeing only what he wanted to see and in making that conform to his theories was extraordinary. He could not be beaten because, for him, right on the other side did not exist. He came nearest to it one evening when discussing the war, not with an Englishman, but with an American and an officer into the bargain, whom he met in our rooms, and who said that there was always blundering at the opening of a campaign, as at Santiago, where two divisions of the United States Army were drawn up so that, if they had fired, they must have shot each other down. It was a shock, but Whistler rallied, offered no comment, and was careful afterwards to avoid such dangerous ground.
Prejudice coloured all his talk of the English, whose characteristics to him were as humorous as his were incomprehensible to them. It was astonishing to hear him seize upon a weak point, play with it, elaborate it fantastically, and then make it tell. The "enemies" suffered from his wit as he from their density. His artistic sense served him in satire as in everything else. One favourite subject was the much-vaunted English cleanliness. He evolved an elaborate theory:
"Paris is full of baths and always has been; you can see them, beautiful Louis XV. and Louis XVI. baths on the Seine; in London, until a few years ago, there were none except in Argyll Street, to which Britons came with a furtive air, afraid of being caught. And the French, having the habit of the bath, think and say nothing of it, while the British—well, they're so astonished now they have learned to bathe, they can't talk of anything but their tub."
The Bath Club he described as "the latest incarnation of the British discovery of water." His ingenious answer was ready when British virtue was extolled. He repeated to us a conversation at this time with Madame Sarah Grand. She said it was delightful to be backin England after five or six weeks in France, where she had not seen any men, except two, and they were Germans, whom she could have embraced in welcome. A Frenchman never would forget that women are women. She liked to meet men as comrades, without thought of sex. Whistler told her: "You are to be congratulated, madam—certainly, the Englishwoman succeeds, as no other could, in obliging men to forget her sex."
A few days after, he reported another "happy" answer. He was with three Englishmen and a German. One of the Englishmen said, "The trouble is, we English are too honest; we have always been stupidly honest." Whistler turned to the German: "You see, it is now historically acknowledged that whenever there has been honesty in this country, there has been stupidity."
His ingenuity increased with the consternation it caused, and the "Islander" figured more and more in his talk.
The excitement in China this summer interested him little less than affairs in South Africa. He was indignant, not with the Chinese for the alleged massacres at Pekin, but with Americans and Europeans for considering the massacres an outrage that called for redress. After all, the Chinese had their way of doing things, and it was better to lose whole armies of Europeans than to harm the smallest of beautiful things in that great wonderful country. He said to us one day:
"Here are these people thousands of years older in civilisation than us, with a religion thousands of years older than ours, and our missionaries go out there and tell them who God is. It is simply preposterous, you know, that for what Europe and America consider a question of honour one blue pot should be risked."
Another evening when he said this to a larger audience, one of the party asked him if art did not always mark the decadence of a country. "Well, you know," said Whistler, "a good many countries manage to go to the dogs without it."
The month of July in London was unusually hot, and for the first time we heard Whistler complain of the heat, in which, as a rule, he revelled, though he dressed for it at dinner in white duck trousers and waistcoat with his dinner-jacket, and in the street exchanged his silk hat for a wide-brimmed soft grey felt, or a "dandy" straw. He was restless, anxious to stay in his studio, but, for the sake of Miss BirniePhilip and her mother, anxious to go to the country or by the sea. Looking from our windows, he would say that, with the river there and the Embankment Gardens gay with music and people, we were in no need to leave town, and we were sure he envied us. One day he went to Amersham, near London, with the idea of staying there and painting two landscapes somebody wanted. Mr. Wimbush took him.
"You know, really, I can't say that, towards twilight, it is not pretty in a curious way, but not really pretty after all—it's all country, and the country is detestable."
Eventually he took a house at Sutton, near Dublin, persuaded Mrs. and Miss Birnie Philip to go there, and then promptly left with Mr. Elwell for Holland. He told Mr. Sidney Starr once that only one landscape interested him, the landscape of London. But he made an exception of Holland. When he was reminded that there is no country there, he said to us:
"That's just why I like it—no great, full-blown, shapeless trees as in England, but everything neat and trim, and the trunks of the trees painted white, and the cows wear quilts, and it is all arranged and charming. And look at the skies! They talk about the blue skies of Italy; the skies of Italy are not blue, they are black. You do not see blue skies except in Holland and here, where you get great white clouds, and then the spaces between are blue! And in Holland there is atmosphere, and that means mystery. There is mystery here, too, and the people don't want it. What they like is when the east wind blows, when you can look across the river and count the wires in the canary bird's cage on the other side."
He stayed a week at Domburg, a small seashore village near Middelburg. With its little red roofs nestling among the sand-dunes and its wide beach under the skies he loved, he thought it enchanting, and made a few water-colours which he showed us afterwards in the studio. The place, he said, was not yet exploited, and at Madame Elout's he found good wine and a Dordrecht banker who talked of the Boers and assured him they were all right, the Dutch would see to that. A visit to Ireland followed. He went full of expectations, for as the descendant of the Irish Whistlers he called himself an Irishman. We have a note of his stay there from the late Sir William Armstrong, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland:
"He took a house, 'Craigie' the name of it, at Sutton, six miles from Dublin, on the spit of sand which connects the Hill of Howth with the mainland (as the Neutral Ground unites 'Gib.' with Spain) on the north side of Dublin Bay. There he excited the curiosity of the natives by at once papering up the windows on the north side of the house, for half their height, with brown paper. He came to dinner with me one night, stipulating that he should be allowed to depart at 9.30, as he was such an early goer to bed. We dined accordingly at 7, and his Jehu, with the only closed fly the northern half of County Dublin could supply, was punctually at the door at the hour named. There he had to wait for three hours, for it was not until 12.30 that the delightful flow of Whistler's eloquence came to an end, and that he extracted himself from the deep arm-chair which had been his pulpit for four hours and a half. His talk had been great, and we had confined ourselves to little exclamatory appreciations and gazes of rapt adoration! I spent an hour or two with him in the Irish National Gallery. I found him there lying on the handrail before a sketch of Hogarth (George II. and his family) and declaring it was the most beautiful picture in the world. The only other remark on any particular picture which I can now recall is his saying of my own portrait by Walter Osborne, 'It has askin, it has askin!' He soon grew tired of Sutton and Ireland, and when I called at Craigie a few days after the dinner he had flown. He did not forget to send a graceful word to my wife, signed with his name and Butterfly."
He did little work during his visit. The house was on the wrong side of the bay, the weather was wretched, but Chester, on the way home, was "charming and full of possibilities."
In September the frequent meetings were continued. The talk drifting here and there, touched upon many subjects belonging to no particular period, but characteristic of his moods and memories. Thus, one evening, when Mr. W. B. Blaikie was with us and the talk turned to Scotland, Whistler told stories of Carlyle. Allingham, he said, was for a time by way of being Carlyle's Boswell and was always at his heels. They were walking in the Embankment Gardens at Chelsea, when Carlyle stopped suddenly: "Have a care, mon, have a care, for ye have a tur-r-ruble faculty for developing into a bore!" Carlyle had been reading about Michael Angelo with some idea of writing his life or anessay, but it was Michael Angelo, the engineer, who interested him. Another day, walking with Allingham, they passed South Kensington Museum. "You had better go in," Allingham said. "Why, mon, only fools go in there." Allingham explained that he would find sculpture by Michael Angelo, and he should know something of the artist's work before writing his life. "No," said Carlyle, "we need only glance at that."
Whistler's talk of Howell and Tudor House overflowed with anecdotes of the adventurer, for whom he retained a tender regret, and the group gathered about Rossetti. He accounted for Howell's downfall by a last stroke of inventiveness when he procured rare, priceless black pots for a patron who later discovered rows of the same pots in an Oxford Street shop. Whistler had a special liking for the story of Rossetti dining at Lindsey Row, at the height of the blue and white craze, and becoming so excited when his fish was served on a plate he had never seen before that he forgot the fish and turned it over, fish and all, to look at the mark on the back. Another memory was of a dinner at Mr. Ionides', with Rossetti a pagan, Sir Richard Burton a Mohammedan, Lady Burton a Catholic. They fell into a hot argument over religion, but Whistler said nothing. Lady Burton, who was in a state of exaltation, could not stand his silence: "And what are you, Mr. Whistler?" "I, madam," he answered, "why, I am an amateur!" He spent many evenings drawing upon his memory of the "droll" and "joyous" things of the past. But the past brought him back with redoubled interest to the present, in which so much waited to be done.
In October we began to notice a change, and we knew that when he worried there was cause. He was called to Paris once or twice about the school and his "châteauxandpieds-à-terre." After one of these journeys he was laid up with a severe cold at Mr. Heinemann's. In November he was in bed for many days at Garlant's. He had other worries. British critics conspired either to ignore his success at the Paris Exhibition, or account for it sneeringly or lyingly. He was irritated when he read an article on the Exhibition, signed D. S. M., in theSaturday Reviewdevoted altogether, he told us, to Manet and Fantin, with only a passing reference to himself:
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PORTRAIT OF MRS. WALTER SICKERTPORTRAIT OF MRS. WALTER SICKERTIn the possession of Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson](See page 360)
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PORTRAIT OF MISS WOAKESPORTRAIT OF MISS WOAKESIn the possession of Messrs. Knvedler & Co.(See page 360)
In the possession of Messrs. Knvedler & Co.
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"Manet did very good work, of course, but then Manet was alwaysl'écolier—the student with a certain sense of things in paint, and that is all!—he never understood that art is a positive science, one step in it leading to another. He painted, you know, inla manière noire, the dark pictures that look very well when you come to them at Durand-Ruel's, after wandering through rooms of screaming blues and violets and greens, but he was so little in earnest that midway in his career he took to the blues and violets and greens himself. You know, it is the trouble with so many; they paint in one way—brilliant colour, say—they see something, like Ribot, and, dear me, they think, we had better try to do this too, and they do and, well, really, you know, in the end they do nothing for themselves!"
He was furious with the critic who stated that his medal was awarded forThe Little White Girl. The statement was offensive because, he said, "the critics are always passing over recent work for early masterpieces, though all are masterpieces; there is no better, no worse; the work has always gone on, it has grown, not changed, and the pictures I am painting now are full of qualities they cannot understand to-day any better than they understoodThe Little White Girlat the time it was painted."
This was an argument he often used. A few evenings after, he told a man, who suggested that Millet's later work was not so good because he was married and had to make both ends meet, "You're wrong. An artist's work is never better, never worse; it must be always good, in the end as in the beginning, if he is an artist, if it is in him to do anything at all. He would not be influenced by the chance of a wife or anything of that kind. He is always the artist."
He was annoyed because critics could not see a truth which to him was simple and obvious. His annoyance culminated when theMagazine of Artnot only said theGrand Prixwas awarded forThe Little White Girl, but protested against the award, because the picture was painted before the ten years' limit imposed by the French authorities, a protest printed in other papers. Whistler could not bear this in silence, for it looked like an effort to deprive him of his first high award from a Paris Exhibition. The attack was disgraceful. Whistler's two other pictures were his most recent, and, as we have said,The Little White Girlwas specially invited. As soon as he was well enough, he came to us several times, with Mr. William Webb, his solicitor, to talk the affair over. As a result, an apology was demanded, and made. Thisbelittling of certain pictures in favour of others, with its inevitable inference, offended him, in the end as in the beginning. Mr. Sargent writes us an instance of his manner of carrying off the offence before the world. Somebody brought him a commission for a painting, stipulating that it should be "a serious work." Whistler's answer was that he "could not break with the traditions of a lifetime."
Another worry he should have been spared was a dispute with one of the tenants at the Rue du Bac, a trivial matter which, in his nervous state, loomed large and made him unnecessarily miserable. The carpets of the lady on the floor above him were shaken out of her windows into his garden, and it could not be stopped. He tried the law, but was told he must have disinterested witnesses outside the family. If he engaged a detective, a month might pass before she would do it again. But it chanced that, while beating a carpet, it fell into his garden, and his servants refused to give it up. The lady went to law and his lawyer advised him to return the carpet. It depressed him hopelessly, and as he had long ceased to live in the Rue du Bac, we could not understand why he should have heard of so petty a domestic squabble.
Ill and worried as he was, our work at intervals came to a standstill. When he felt better and stronger the talks went on, but at moments he seemed almost to fear that the book would prove an obituary. Once he said to us that we "wanted to make an Old Master of me before my time," and we had too much respect and affection for him to add to his worries by our importunity. With the late autumn his weakness developed into serious illness. By the middle of November he was extremely anxious about himself, for his cough would not go. The doctor's diagnosis, he said, was "lowered in tone: probably the result of living in the midst of English pictures." A sea journey was advised, and Tangier suggested for the winter. When he was with us he could not conceal his anxiety. If he sneezed, he hurried away. He fell asleep before dinner was over; sometimes he could hardly keep awake through the evening. Once or twice he seemed to be more than asleep, when there was nothing to do but to rouse him, which was not easy, and we were extremely frightened until we could, and, indeed, until J. got him back to Garlant's. He would never trust himself to the night air until Augustine had mixed him a hot "grog." Tangier did not appeal to him, and he asked J. to go with him to Gibraltar,stay a while at Malaga, and then come back by Madrid to see at last the pictures he had always wanted to see. He was hurt when J.'s work made it impossible for him to leave London.
In December Whistler gave up the struggle to brave the London winter, and decided to sail for Gibraltar, on the way to Tangier and Algiers, with Mr. Birnie Philip, his brother-in-law, to take care of him. Sir Thomas Sutherland, Chairman of the P. & O. Company, arranged for every comfort on the voyage. But, as usual, there were complications at the last moment—as usual, the fearful trouble of getting off from his studio. Everybody was pressed into his service and kept busy, all the waiters in the hotel were in attendance. The day before he was to start he discovered that his etching plates needed to be regrounded and he sent them to J., who agreed to do what he could at such short notice, but warned him that there was not time to ground the plates properly and that very likely they would be spoiled. Whistler sent for them in the evening and, instead of leaving them out to dry until the morning, wrapped them up and packed them among the linen in his trunk. It was extraordinary that a man so careful about his work should always have wanted somebody else to ground his plates or prepare his canvases, or do something as important, that he should have done for himself, and that oftener than not he should have wanted it, as on this occasion, at the last moment. However, with the help of his friends and the waiters and his family, he was got ready in time, and on December 14 he started for the South.